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Dr.  GEORGE  FAULKNER 

OF 
JAMAICA  PLAIN 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arcinive 

in  2010  with  funding  from 

Open  Knowledge  Commons 


http://www.archive.org/details/doctorgeorgefaulOObost 


Dr.  GEORGE  FAULKNER 


George  Faulkner  was  born  in  Billerica, 
Massachusetts,  July  14,  1819,  and  died  at  his 
home,  29  Greenough  Avenue,  Jamaica  Plain,  on 
August  27,  1911.  He  was  the  youngest  of  twelve 
children  of  Francis  Faulkner,  a  woolen  cloth 
manufacturer  of  North  Billerica,  and  his  paternal 
grandfather  was  Colonel  Francis  Faulkner  of 
Acton,  who,  it  is  said,  commanded  the  Middle- 
sex Regiment  of  Militia  at  the  Battle  of  Lexing- 
ton. Francis  Faulkner,  son  of  the  Colonel,  and 
father  of  Dr.  Faulkner,  was  then  a  lad  of  six- 
teen years  and  appears  to  have  been  also  on  the 
battlefield  after  the  British  had  begun  to  retire 
having  followed  his  father  with  a  supply  of  food 
prepared  by  his  mother  and  other  women  of 
Acton  after  the  minute  men  had  hurriedly  gone 
forward  to  defend  Concord  and  Lexington.  Dr. 
Faulkner  had  also  distinguished  connections  in 
other  branches  of  the  family,  two  uncles  having 
become  Congressmen^  and  two  cousins,  viz., 
Benjamin  R.  Curtis,  Judge  of  the  Massachusetts 
Supreme    Court,  and    Rev.    Cyrus  Hamlin,  or- 


ganizer  and  first  President  of  Robert  College, 
Constantinople,  bearing  well-known  names. 

The  boy  George  attended  the  public  schools 
and  Westford  Academy,  and  in   1835   went  to 
work  in  a  store  in  Boston  intending  to  become  a 
merchant,  but  after  three  years  returned  home, 
finding    mercantile    life    distasteful.      Securing 
from  his  father  permission  to  go  to  college,  he 
was  prepared  at  Leicester  Academy  and  finally 
at  Phillips  Academy,   Exeter,   an  institution  to 
which  he  ever  after  referred  with  pleasure  and 
gratitude.     Entering  Harvard   in    1840   he   was 
graduated  in  the  class  of   1844,  having  in  the 
meantime  taught  school  in  the  winter  vacations. 
On  leaving  college  he  began  to  study  medicine 
in  the  office  of  Dr.  Twitchell,  a  famous  physician 
of   Keene,    N.    H.,   and   in    1847   obtained   the 
degree  of  Doctor  of  Medicine  at  the  Harvard 
Medical  School  where   he  had   spent  two  years. 
He  had  a  valuable  hospital  experience  to  which, 
during  his  later  years,  he  often  referred,  in  one 
of    the    city    institutions   on    Rainsford    Island, 
where  he  saw  a  great  variety  of  cases,  including 
small  pox,  often  of  the  worst  type,  and  the  now 
rare  disease,   ''ship"   or  ''jail"   fever    (typhus). 
Here  he  was  so  impressed  with  certain  reme- 
diable abuses  of   administration  that  he  wrote 
to  one  of  the  leading  newspapers  an  anonymous 


letter  drawing  public  attention  to  the  need  of 
reform,  wihereupon  he  soon  had  the  amusement 
as  well  as  the  satisfaction  of  witnessing  the 
mystification  and  discomfiture  of  his  superiors 
at  the  revelations  which  he  himself  had  made. 
This  may  well  have  been  his  first  effective  ex- 
pression of  that  indignation  towards  civic 
wrong-doing,  that  eagerness  for  the  improve- 
ment of  the  world,  that  sympathy  with  the  poor 
and  the  unfortunate  which  were  some  of  the 
chief  characteristics  of  his  riper  years. 

We  next  find  him  associated  with  a  much 
older  physician,  Dr.  Luther  M.  Harris  of  the 
old  town  of  West  Roxbury,  residing  in  that  part 
of  it  now  known  as  Jamaica  Plain,  and  when, 
not  long  after.  Dr.  Harris  died,  Dr.  Faulkner 
succeeded  to  his  practice.  For  thirty-two  con- 
secutive years  he  practised  medicine  in  Jamaica 
Plain,  and  in  his  later  years  he  was  often  heard 
to  say,  "No  man  ever  had  finer  people  to  care 
for.  Most  of  them  were  so  intelligent  that  if  I 
told  them  I  didn't  know  what  ailed  them  they 
didn't  dismiss  me;  and  even  if  I  told  them  they 
didn't  need  any  medicine  they  still  wanted  me 
to  keep  coming.  And  most  of  them  paid  their 
bills."  Sayings  like  this — of  which  there  are 
many — ^may  possibly  give  to  those  who  did  not 
know  him,  some  faint  idea  of  the  manner  of 
man  Dr.  Faulkner  was. 


Of  medium  height,  sparely  built,  erect  in 
form,  inquisitive,  eager  and  earnest  in  gaze, 
quick  of  apprehension  and  of  speech,  hearty  in 
laughter,  yet  often  v/himsical  and  always  inde- 
pendent and  original,  Dr.  Faulkner  went  his 
way  in  and  out  among  his  people,  alert  and 
sympathetic  and  a  little  aloof,  not  always  under- 
stood, but  always  respected  and  always  beloved. 
He  was  a  life-long  admirer  of  his  first  profes- 
sional teacher.  Dr.  Twitchell,  and  an  ardent 
disciple — almost  a  worshipper — of  Dr.  Jacob 
Bigelow,  whose  famous  essay  on  ''Self  Limited 
Diseases,"  published  in  1835,  was  the  corner  stone 
upon  which  Dr.  Faulkner  built  the  whole  edifice 
of  his  own  theory  and  practice.  An  inevitable 
corollary  of  Dr.  Bigelow's  great  essay  was  the 
comparative  uselessness  of  drugs  (especially  in 
such  diseases  as  the  fevers)  and  Dr.  Faulkner — 
who  never  hesitated,  as  so  many  do,  to  accept 
the  consequences  of  his  theories — ^became  from 
the  outset  of  his  practice  a  physician  who 
"drugged"  but  little,  thereby  dififering  widely 
from  many  of  his  contemporaries.  In  his  old 
age  nothing  gave  him  greater  satisfaction  than 
the  general  recognition  and  acceptance  by  the 
profession  of  the  same  point  of  view  which  he 
had  adopted  years  before  as  a  young  man  and  in 
the   face  of  much  hostile  criticism.     His  own 


simple  theory  of  medical  practice  reduced  to  its 
lowest  terms  and  often  reiterated  by  him'  in  con- 
versation was,  "Comfort,  support  and  cheer 
your  patient."  And  yet  he  was  no  nihilist  in 
medicine.  He  always  spoke  gratefully  of  drugs 
— "about  a  half  a  dozen  or  so."  It  was  simply 
that  he  believed  on  the  one  hand  with  all  his 
heart  in  the  great  Hippocratic  doctrine  of  the 
healing  power  of  nature,  and  on  the  other  in  his 
own  theory  quoted  above  which  involved  the 
control  of  pain  and  the  reinforcement  of  the 
weak  or  struggling  body  and  soul.  But  above 
all,  along  with  his  professional  advice  and  into 
his  every  prescription  went  some  of  his  own 
cheerful  patience  and  courage,  some  of  his  own 
fortifying  common  sense,  which  left  the  patient, 
not  as  sometimes  happens  when  the  doctor  goes, 
sadder  if  no  wiser,  but  "comforted,  supported 
and  cheered"  by  his  manly  courage  and  trans- 
parent honesty. 

Sensible  of  his  honorable  ancestry  and  grate- 
ful for  it.  Dr.  Faulkner  was  yet,  both  in  theory 
and  practice,  a  thoroughgoing  democrat.  The 
poor,  the  unfortunate,  the  weary,  and  the  heavy 
laden,  never  failed  to  enlist  his  sympathy  or  aid. 
He  was  theoretically  opposed  to  power  and  privi- 
lege of  every  sort,  but  only  if  unjustly  obtained 
or    held    or    exercised.      For    he    was    no    an- 


archist  or  socialist.  He  knew  too  well  that 
physical  and  physiological  features  differentiate, 
and  must  forever  separate,  individuals  and  races. 
But  all  the  more  he  held,  for  that  very  reason, 
that  the  strong  must  help  to  bear  the  burdens  of 
the  weak,  and  it  was  because  of  this  among 
other  things  that  a  hospital  appealed  to  him  and 
to  his  wife  and  daughter  as  one  of  the  finest 
forms  of  philanthropy. 

In  politics.  Dr.  Faulkner  was  an  old  line 
Democrat,  although  in  his  later  years  he  some- 
times refrained  from  voting  for  a  candidate  he 
could  not  approve,  and  more  rarely  voted  as  an 
independent.  As  illustrating  his  interest  in  the 
community  in  which  he  lived  for  so  many  years 
and  his  eager  desire  for  its  civic,  social,  and 
philanthropic  betterment,  it  may  be  said  that  he 
was  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Jamaica  Plain 
Friendly  Society,  of  the  local  Dispensary,  of  the 
Eliot  Club,  and  of  the  Fraternal  Council  of 
Churches. 

Dr.  Faulkner  was  twice  married,  first  in  1847 
to  Mary  Ann  Spaulding  of  Billerica,  and  again 
in  1870  to  Abby  Adams  of  Boston.  Only  one 
child,  of  the  first  marriage,  Mary,  reached  adult 
life  and  she  died  in  1896  at  the  age  of  37.  Mary 
Faulkner  inherited  her  father's  ability,  honesty 
and  good  sense,  as  well  as  his  profound  svm- 


9 

pathy  with  the  poor  and  the  unfortunate.  She  was 
a  devoted  churchwoman  and  a  constant  worker 
in  charitable  and  philanthropic  organizations, 
Her  influence,  especially  upon  boys  and  young 
men,  was  very  great,  and  she  will  long  be  re- 
membered in  Jamaic'a  Plain  for  her  good 
works  and  her  sweet  reasonaibleness.  To  Mary 
Faulkner,  Abby  Adams  Faulkner,  having  no 
children  of  her  own,  gave  without  reserve  al- 
most the  same  affection  which  she  would  have 
bestowed  upon  her  own  daughter.  Mrs.  Faulk- 
ner and  Mary  Faulkner  were  very  unlike  in 
many  respects,  and  a  greater  mutual  attraction 
of  opposite  natures  is  seldom  seen.  Mrs.  Faulk- 
ner was  not  practical  and  she  lived  largely  in 
the  realm  of  the  spirit  and  of  the  imagination, — 
in  music,  in  poetry  and  in  the  fine  arts;  and 
yet  she  also  was  tenderly  sympathetic,  and  full 
of  pity  for  the  poor  and  the  sick  and  the  afflicted. 
Father,  mother  and  daughter  thus  came  to- 
gether and  became  wonderfully  united  upon  the 
elemental  basis  of  a  common  humanitarianism. 
Hence,  too,  it  was  natural  that  when  their  only 
daughter  died,  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Faulkner  should 
have  determined  to  devote  all  their  resources  to 
lier  memory  in  the  establishment  of  a  general 
hospital  for  the  benefit  "of  the  people  of  the  old 
town    of    West    Roxbury."      For   this    purpose 


10 

they  themselves  chose  as  a  site  the  beautiful  lot 
of  land,  adjoining  and  overlooking  the  Arnold 
Arboretum,  upon  which  the  Hospital  now 
stands. 

After  Airs.  Faulkner's  death  on  January  5, 
1900  Dr.  Faulkner  made  over  to  the  hospital 
most  of  his  own  property,  and  it  thereupon  be- 
came possible  to  organize  the  corporation  and 
begin  construction.  At  Dr.  Faulkner's  death  the 
trust  established  by  Mrs.  Faulkner's  will  was 
turned  over  to  the  Hospital,  the  sums  thus  given 
to  the  Hospital  amounting  to  $237,817.89  from 
Mrs.  Faulkner's  estate  and  $248,021.30  from  Dr. 
Faulkner's. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  during  the  years 
that  intervened  between  Mrs.  Faulkner's  death 
and  his  own.  Dr.  Faulkner  never  interfered  in 
the  smallest  degree  with  the  work  of  the  Trus- 
tees, and  never,  by  either  word  or  deed,  sought 
to  influence  their  action.  He  never  entered  the 
building  during  the  period  of  construction,  and 
only  too  seldom  visited  the  Hospital  after  it 
went  into  operation.  This  was  not  from  any 
lack  of  interest,  but  rather  because  he  was  so 
much  interested  that  he  feared  'he  might  meddle 
and  make  trouble.  When  speaking  with  any  of 
the  Trustees  or  the  Staff  he  invariably  referred 
to  the  Hospital  as  "your  Hospital."     And  yet. 


11 

when  stopped  on  the  street  as  he  often  was  by 
some  one  who  had  been  a  patient  there,  or  who 
had  had  a  friend  there,  and  told  how  much  the 
hospital  had  done  for  some  one,  he  was  frankly 
delighted  and  fond  of  repeating  the  conversa- 
tion. 

Dr.  Faulkner  had  during  his  long  life  his  full 
share  of  trouble,  pain  and  sorrow,  but  few,  very 
few,  achieve  maturity  and  old  age  so  full  of 
vigor  and  energy  and  fortitude  as  did  he.  He 
was  forty  years  of  age  before  he  had  accumu- 
lated as  much  as  one  thousand  dollars  of 
capital,  and  in  early  life — at  about  thirty — he  was 
deemed  almost  an  invalid.  Perhaps,  as  has  so 
often  happened  with  others,  his  struggles  and  his 
poor  health  made  him  careful  and  thus  pro- 
longed and  conserved  his  age.  Certain  it  is  that 
in  his  last  years  he  seemed  to  possess  unusual 
vigor  and  endurance,  both  mental  and  physical. 
To  some  who  knew  him  best  it  was  little  short  of 
marvellous  to  discover  afresh  from  time  to  time 
the  breadth  of  his  reading  and  thinking  and  the 
soundness  of  his  mental  assimilation.  Often  it 
seemed  as  if  he  were  an  omnivorous  reader,  and 
as  if  his  reading  kept  his  body,  as  well  as  his 
mind,  active  and  alert.  At  other  times,  to  one 
observing  his  habit  of  taking  long  walks  in  the 
open  air,  it  seemed  as  if  the  freshened  physical 


12 

basis  almost  created  the  keen  and  vigorous 
mental  superstructure.  Walking  was  for  years 
his  invariable  daily  custom,  and  not  until  the 
muscles  refused  to  do  their  work  did  he  abandon 
it.  Those  who  saw  him  trudging  about  day 
after  day,  doubtless  thought  walking  his  pastime. 
But  it  was  not  so.  More  often  it  was  only  a 
stern  sense  of  duty  that  urged  him  forth,  at- 
tended until  the  later  years  by  two  small  dogs, 
and  afterward  by  one, — Scotch  terriers  belong- 
ing to  his  wife  and  daughter.  A  young  friend 
after  making  him  a  call  three  or  four  years  before 
his  death  and  finding  him  particularly  alert  and 
breezy,  wrote : — ''It  is  his  keen  interest  in  life, 
in  every  side  of  life,  that  appeals  to  me.  His 
odd,  terse  way  of  expressing  himself  gives  me 
the  same  kind  of  pleasure  I  get  from  a  bright 
novel, — only  infinitely  better, — he  is  so  teeming 
with  humanity." 

No  sketch  of  Dr.  Faulkner's  life  would  be 
complete  without  reference  to  his  simple,  yet 
profound,  religious  faith.  Brought  up  in  a 
Unitarian  family  he  was  connected  at  different 
times  more  or  less  closely  with  the  Congrega- 
tional, Baptist  and  Episcopalian  Churches.  Dis- 
tinctions of  sect  or  creed,  however,  meant  little 
to  him  and  one  of  his  most  valued  friends  was 
his  neighbor,  the  Rev.  C.  F.  Dole,  now  and  for 


13 

many  years  the  Unitarian  minister  of  Jamaica 
Plain,  who  has  finely  written  of  him: — "He 
faced  the  world  like  a  true,  brave  and  patient 
man;  he  was  independent  in  speech  and  action, 
never  afraid  to  be  in  the  minority;  he  bore  old 
age  with  genial  grace, 'and  faced  the  coming  of 
death  as  one  who  goes  to  meet  a  friend ;  he  kept 
to  the  last  his  wide  interest  in  all  things  that 
touch  the  welfare  of  man,  and  while  seeing  the 
evil  and  the  mischief,  held  an  almost  youthful 
confidence  in  the  victory  of  the  good.  .  .  He 
was  an  invincible  democrat,  with  Abraham 
Lincoln's  conviction  that  the  people  can  and 
must  be  trusted.  His  broad  sympathies  impressed 
themselves  also  upon  his  religious  opinions,  and 
he  could  scarcely  abide  sectarian  divisions." 

While  Mrs.  Faulkner  and  Mary  were  living 
the  three  occasionally  attended  at  the  same 
time  three  different  churches — yet  always  with 
perfect  tolerance  each  of  the  other's  opinions. 
Dr.  Faulkner  never  discussed  or  intruded  his 
beliefs,  but  those  who  knew  him  well  saw  that 
each  day  he  read  his  Bible  and  knew  that  he 
spent  some  time  in  prayer.  Only  very  rarely, 
even  to  his  nearest  friends,  did  he  ever  speak  of 
his  religious  opinions,  and  then,  though  with 
perfect  confidence,  in  absolute  humility.  He 
sometimes  quoted,  as  expressing  his  own  views. 


14 

the  following  passages  from  Principal  Caird  of 
the  University  of  Glasgow: 

"Then  I  answer,  finally,  that  to  whatever 
world  death  introduces  you  the  best  conceivable 
preparation  for  it  is  to  labor  for  the  highest  good 
of  the  world  in  which  you  live. 

"Be  the  change  which  death  brings  what  it 
may,  he  who  has  spent  his  life  in  trying  to  make 
this  world  better  can  never  be  unprepared  for 
another." 

At  the  age  of  90  Dr.  Faulkner  seemed  hale 
and  vigorous,  and  at  91  hardly  less  so.  But  as 
92  drew  on  he  became  gradually  weaker,  looking 
patiently,  but  rather  wearily  and  a  little  wist- 
fully, for  the  end.  This  came  at  last  not,  as  he 
had  hoped,  by  apoplexy  but  as  a  flame,  when  fuel 
fails,  burns  low  and  flickers  and  goes  out. 


MINUTE   ADOPTED    BY   THE  TRUSTEES 

OF  THE  FAULKNER  HOSPITAL 

ON  OCTOBER  19.  1911 


"The  Trustees  of  the  Faulkner  Hospital  desire  to 
place  on  record  their  sense  of  personal  loss  in  the 
death  of  the  surviving  Founder,  Dr.  George  Faulkner. 
They  desire  also  to  bear  witness  to  his  steadfast  and 
unquestioning  devotion  to  the  Hospital  and  all  con- 
nected with  it ;  to  his  firm  conviction  of  the  necessity 
and  the  obligation  of  the  care  of  the  unfortunate  by 
the  more  fortunate, — especially  in  the  direction  of 
medical  charities ;  and  to  his  abiding  belief  in  democ- 
racy, coupled  with  a  profound  sympathy  for  the  poor. 

"For  more  than  thirty  years  Dr.  Faulkner  was  a 
practising  physician  in  the  old  town  of  West  Rox- 
bury,  and  was  thus  enabled  to  see  and  to  study  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  It  was  no  surprise, 
therefore,  to  those  who  knew  him  and  Mrs.  Faulkner 
when  it  appeared  that  they  had  determined  to  bestow 
their  property  upon  a  general  hospital,  to  be  located 
in  Jamaica  Plain,  in  memory  of  their  daughter  Mary, 
whose  labors  and  interests  had  been  much  among  the 
lowly,  and  whose  sympathies  were  essentially  identi- 
cal with  their  own.  It  was  the  constant  desire  of 
the  founders  to  leave  behind  them  something  of  per- 
manent benefit  to  the  citizens,  and  especially  the  less 
fortunate  citizens  of  the  old  town  of  West  Roxbury, 
and  the  beautiful  grounds  upon  which  the  hospital 
stands  were  selected  and  purchased  for  it  by  them 


16 

personally.  The  site  and  the  hospital,  as  well  as  the 
endowment,  thus  stand  to-day,  and  we  trust  will 
forever  stand,  an  abiding  testimonial  to  their  regard 
for  their  town  and  for  their  fellow-citizens, — a  noble 
monument  of  civic  and  philanthropic  affection. 

"We  rejoice  that  Dr.  Faulkner  lived  to  see  the 
Hospital  in  full  operation  and  that  its  plans  and  its 
conduct  had  from  the  beginning  his  approval.  We 
shall  miss  his  sound  and  wise  and  cheerful  support, 
his  broad  humanitarianism,  his  strong  conviction  of 
the  reality  of  human  progress. 

"Above  all,  those  of  us  who  have  had  the  privilege 
of  his  personal  friendship  will  miss  Dr.  Faulkner's 
eager  welcome,  his  keen  interest  in  affairs,  his  vdde 
and  courageous  and  charitable  outlook,  his  infectious 
optimism,  his  simple  and  childlike  religious  faith,  his 
fortitude,  and  his  sagacious  judgments  on  men  and 
manners  and  institutions.  May  his  memory  long 
remain  as  a  benediction  and  an  integral  part  of  the 
endowment  of  the  Hospital  which  bears  his  family 
name." 


Jamaica  Printing   Company, 
Jamaica  Plain,  Boston,  Mass. 


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